AOL Settles Accessibility Suit

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AOL Settles Accessibility Suit

America Online has forestalled a court battle by agreeing to make its client software more accessible to the vision impaired.

The National Federation of the Blind has agreed to postpone a case filed under the Americans With Disabilities Act based on AOL's promise to make changes in version 6.0 if its Internet access program.

"This is a victory for the blind," said Curtis Chong, director of technology for the National Federation of the Blind. "It's the first major step down the long road of getting full access to electronic information."

As part of the agreement, which was reached on Wednesday, Chong said the NFB agreed to postpone its lawsuit against AOL for one year. The media giant, meanwhile, outlined its intentions for making its software more accessibility-friendly.

The NFB alleged in its suit that AOL's proprietary client software and content was not screen reader compliant. Screen reader technology allows devices to "read" the contents of a computer screen and translate it into other formats such as Braille or audio. Since the technology encounters problems reading text in images, the company has agreed to develop alternative technology that will make content available to those with disabilities.

By reaching an agreement, AOL for now avoids a suit that sought to declare its service a virtual "public accommodation" as per the ADA.

Had AOL's software been ruled as such, the company might have been required to offer its services in a way that did not discriminate against people with disabilities as per the ADA's mandate.

Although the act makes no mention of online services, a federal court in Boston found that the ADA's public accommodation provisions were not limited to physical structures and also applied to services provided by telephone or mail.

"It would be irrational to conclude that persons who enter an office to purchase services are protected by the ADA, but persons who purchase the same services over the telephone or by mail are not," wrote the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. "Congress could not have intended such an absurd result."

With the agreement in place, NFB's Chong said "we can get the lawyers out of the way and start talking technical."

"We were already looking at how to make the AOL 6.0 client compatible with screen reader technology," said AOL spokesman Rich D'Amato. "Issues like applicability of the ADA did not come up during our talks simply because we found that we were both focused on getting the accessibility work done," said AOL's D'Amato.

To demonstrate its commitment to accessibility, AOL has crafted an accessibility policy and instituted a company-wide accessibility checklist for employees to use as a guide when developing new content or software.

D'Amato said AOL will educate its employees to be sensitive to the issue of accessibility.